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If only this could translate into a scratch-and-sniff article. Right now, you'd be effortlessly smelling the scents that have made Italy famous: the baking loaves and focaccia (along with the rosemary and olive oil drizzled on top) that baker, Joseph Calucci, swiftly slides on a two-metrelong peel out of a cavernous 300-yearold firewood oven in Altamura, an ancient walled city in Puglia.

Not long after would come the olfactory overload of seafood freshly hoisted from the Adriatic - Taranto mussels, red prawns (called gamberone), octopus - served al fresco on the beach, and just after sunrise the sweet aroma of wild fennel would hit as we tour with a septuagenarian shepherd around the fields dotted with tufo limestone. That night - as a nearby family's donkey lopes into view loaded up with a few bottles of Primitivo (the native Puglia grape) - there'd be wafts of lamb traditionally prepared in a clay pot as we join the locals for a feast at the 16th-century heritage site of Jesce.

We're on an epic epicurean journey as part of a group of voluntourists who are combining this type of sightseeing with a spot of volunteering. Our mix from England, Canada, Belgium and the U.S. is helping to restore frescoes uncovered by veteran art expert Tonio Creanza, a Vancouver resident, but Puglia native. As lovely as the smells have been so far, it's only when we start to go to work that the senses are truly writ large.

Perhaps it's navigating the undergrowth before reaching the entrance or the thrill of venturing into the dark, but from the first whiff of a Byzantine cave - a dampness that's almost tangibly heaving with history - our band of 10 seems intoxicated.

Our training to this point has focused on us channelling our inner Picassos to create our own frescoes in his workshop. ("We start with natural materials," Creanza enthuses of the limeand-water technique, "then we impose our feelings on it to create art.") Now, we're facing the real art at Carpentino, a nearby 15th-century crypt, delicately starting to chip away at soil, lichen and mould that has crept on to the pictures, while others are needing more of a pickaxe approach due to calcification. However it's coming off the klieg-lit walls to reveal the old drawing beneath, the sentiment's the same: these are centuries-old and should be in a museum - and yet we have our hands all over them.

For more than two decades, Creanza and his group Messors have been striving to bring myriad frescoes from the 4th to the 12th centuries back to life in a relatively poor land where they seemingly crop up as frequently as the forest in B.C. Long abandoned (caves often housed people and animals), we're shown one on a farmer's land, another beside a road, another beside a restored building.

Originally from Victoria, Chelsea Maier explains how she loves combining seeing the surrounding culture while engaging in a community project.

"This is just an amazing opportunity to be able to work on these ancient frescoes," says the 23-yearold designer who now lives in Winnipeg where she runs Summer Skin Clothing. "It's a trip that really forces you to go at a slower pace and makes you feel really connected to the people and the land especially through the food. Yet you feel you are doing something worthwhile for the art in Puglia, which adds an additional purpose to the adventure."

Back at our base, there's no slumming it. We're recalibrating our senses while living in Masseria La Selva, an arched-ceilinged old hunting lodge (read: mansion) used by Pope Benedict XIII in the 18th century. Complete with its own chapel (boasting art from Creanza's wife, Vancouver artist Jennifer Bell; the pair met while she was painting in Puglia), it lies at the heart of some 200 hectares of verdant land dotted with goats, pigs, sheep and cows.

We're treated to pecorino (sheep's) cheese that's made there daily; the honey served is a fresh slab of local honeycomb (a sweet scratch-and-sniff here) and you crack your own almonds from trees a sweatless distance away, along with a cascade of cherries.

Using indigenous semolina flour, the local water and yeast, Altamura's eponymous bread is a gastronomic highlight that never goes mouldy due to a lack of impurities. (To cheekily paraphrase Horace, he even mentions it in his poetry along the lines of "grab this tasty loaf, it'll more than fill a hole and last a long time on your travels"). It's like being invited inside an Italian family's home - and wholeheartedly sharing their abundant meals.

As if testament to the bonding of such a restoration experience, towards the end of our trip Creanza ingeniously arranges a supper in the town before us voluntourists invite strangers off the street in to eat. Sure, there are plenty of folk who look at you madly as you ask them to join you for dinner - and a couple of frisky old men who feel they've just got lucky - but then a sort of restoration of human connection begins.

Inside Altamura, our courtyard is lined with tables and filled with food and laughter. The local town band joins in; the residents hang out of their windows in delighted shock and awe.

If it were an aroma, it would be an explosion of blousy roses, barbecue and a heady mixture of the human spirit. All quite impossible, of course, to capture in a scratch-and-sniff, even if we could.

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